Government

Town Council is looking to strengthen the town’s ordinance dealing with property owners who don’t maintain their property.
“We have a number of consistent violators, “ Town Manager Charles Kolakowki told Council during a work session last week.
Kolakowski said the vast majority of the problem property owners are out of town. Some are out of state. Some “use us for a lawn service.”

This year's state and local election, held on a sunny day with mild temperatures, brought out a larger than anticipated percentage of voters. Preliminary figures show that 21 percent of registered voters in Bedford County cast ballots yesterday.

Voters reelected Sheriff Mike Brown by a margin of 76 percent with 10,225 voters casting ballots to reelect him. Charles Stebbins received 24 percent of the vote with 3,160 votes cast in his favor.

If you have driven down Main Street in Bedford over the past week, you’ve probably noticed that all the trees in Centertown Park have been cut down. Right now, it looks more like Centertown Patio.

Up until 2005, there were two rows of trees at Centertown Park. The first row, the row along the North Bridge Street side, were cut down that year.
“That was kind of the prolog to what we are doing now,” said Bart Warner, Bedford’s assistant town manager.

Pam Bowden, a local real estate paralegal, would like to be Bedford County’s next commissioner of the revenue.
Bowden is lifelong Bedford County native. She’s a Liberty High School graduate and a 2003 Averett University graduate, graduating suma cum laude with a degree in business administration.
There was quite a gap between her high school and college years.
“I went back when my kids went to college,” she said.

District 1 features the only contested school board race, with W. P. Johnson seeking to unseat one-term incumbent Richard Downey.
Downey feels retaining an experienced school board member is important as two current school board members will not seek reelection to the board. He said a new school board member has a steep learning curve. A new member on the school board will spend his first year in office learning how everything works.

District 6 is the only contested board of supervisors race. District 1 Supervisor Bill Thomasson faces no opposition in his reelection bid and Kevin Willis and Tommy Scott are running unopposed for the District 7 and District 5 seats.
Back in June, Andy Dooley defeated District 6 Supervisor Annie Pollard in a primary for the Republican nomination. Pollard, who has always previously run as an independent, is now mounting a write-in campaign.

Sheriff Mike Brown is seeking another term as Bedford County’s sheriff. He promises to continue and expand the programs he has already started, and is adding a new one.
For the past few years Brown has been strongly urging the board of supervisors to add more school resource officers to improve school safety.

On Friday, Oct. 23 the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office, Bedford County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Douglas Schuch and CEO of COPsync, Brandon Flanagan , formally announced the beginning of a new security project.

According to Jack Jones, the county’s director of fire and rescue, a tax increase in 2014 and a plan developed by the county’s volunteer fire chiefs, has made it possible to get rolling on a project to replace aging fire trucks.